On March 2, over 700 hundred students from the North Texas area participated in the annual Fête Française French competition and cultural event at Plano High School.
The events included vocabulary, grammar, dictation, reading, memorized poetry or prose, and cultural events like drama skits, music videos, crafts, drawing, photography, and sewing.
Many of the Flower Mound High School French speakers placed in first, second, or third place for separate events.
The students performed well in these competitions because of the large amount of time dedicated to practicing, not to mention the help they received from the skilled Flower Mound French teachers.
“Our students sign up three to four weeks before the competition. Madame Denton and I have sign – up boards for practice sessions before the competition,” Teacher Apryl Russell said. “We help with pronunciation and translation so that they know what to say.”
Although plenty of preparation time is given, issues for the speakers can still pop up.
“The pieces were chosen for competition in advance so everyone recited the same poems or prose,” Russell said. “It makes for a level playing field, but sometimes that means a lot of vocabulary our students haven’t seen before.”
Usually the schools of the competitors receive a collective score depending on all of the entrants from each school, but this year a different approach was taken towards scoring.
“Historically speaking, Flower Mound has been well prepared, and took 1st or 2nd place sweepstakes every year,” Russell said. “However, this year they did not recognize school scores, just those of individuals.”
The entrants from Flower Mound put in numerous hours and plenty of effort into this event. Their results greatly reflected this.
“I feel that our students worked hard to prepare and were quite competitive in their performances.” French teacher Delynn Denton said. “There is a lot of respect for Flower Mound students at this competition because of our previous wins.”
In the past FMHS has been successful at the competition, and under the instruction of Denton and Russell they should continue this streak.
